AS/A-level English Literature

Peter Malin has taught in Oxfordshire schools for over 30 years. He is particularly interested in Renaissance drama and his PhD thesis was a study of the Royal Shakespeare Company's productions of plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries.

Introduction Contexts (1) Webster's life and works (2) Timeline of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre (3) Webster in his time (4) The play in context: biographical and theatrical (5) Sources of the play (6) The printed text (7) Language and linguistic change (8) The verse of The White Devil (9) The prose of The White Devil (10) Images and imagery (11) Genre: revenge tragedy (12) Genre: Gothic drama (13) The play on stage (14) The play and the critics (15) Jacobean staging Activities (1) Before you begin: brainstorming ideas (2) Banished?: Act I scene 1 (3) Her jealous husband: Act I scene 2 lines 1-196 (4) Excellent devil!: Act I scene 2 lines 197-355 (5) Plots and counterplots: Act II scene 1 (6) Dead midnight: Act II scene 2 (7) Brothers in custody: Act III scene 1 (8) The white devil: Vittoria in Act III scene 2 (9) Ravished justice: the men of Act III scene 2 (10) Painted devils: imagery in Act III scene 2 (11) Unsociably sociable: Act III scene 3 (12) The company of knaves: Act IV scene 1 (13) The devil in crystal: Act IV scene 2 (14) Vivat Paulus Quartus: Act IV scene 3 (15) I would have our plot be ingenious: language and narrative developments in Act V scene 1 (16) The Moor that's come to court: race in Act V scene 1 (17) A broken limb: Act V scene 2 (18) This place is hell: Act V scene 3 (19) The maze of conscience: Act V scenes 4 and 5 (20) A most prodigious comet: Act V scene 6 (21) Who's who?: sorting out the relationships (22) Vittoria Corombona: villain or victim? (23) Horrid laughter (24) Group work: imagery (25) The geography of the play (26) Group drama work: staging the dumbshows (27) Group drama work: speaking the subtext (28) Class drama work: framing the moment (29) Class drama work: hot-seating (30) Responding to a production (31) Group work: designing and marketing the play Assessment focus (1) Suggested coursework essays (2) Approaching a coursework essay (3) Exam essay titles: pair/group work (4) Approaching an exam essay (5) Sample exam question: the character of Giovanni (6) Sample exam question: policy and politicians (7) Sample essay: close analysis of a verse speech (8) Sample essay: close analysis of a prose speech (9) Sample essay: comparison of two speeches (10) Critical ideologies in action: the role of the women in the play Resources (1) Further reading (2) Selected glossary of literary terms (3) Selected literary criticism (4) Selected theatre reviews (5) Fitzgeffrey on Webster